His foe is in possession of the field
by Ilse17
Summary: "The dress was exquisite. The sapphire neckless was gorgeous, and a perfect match for the dress. But Elizabeth could take no pleasure from the gifts... " What could be Elizabeth's thoughts and her relationship to George after 2.10 ?


The dress was exquisite, the blue silk matching her eyes, the cut of the latest fashion. George had ordered it from London. The sapphire neckless was gorgeous, and a perfect match for the dress. But Elizabeth could take no pleasure from the gifts. She knew that they were not a token of George's supposed love for her. He only wanted her to be at her best because Ross would be at the Bodrugan ball. He wanted to show her off in front of his enemy. Hoping, maybe, to see regrets, pain even, in Ross's eyes ?

But Elizabeth already knew that there would be nothing of the sort in these brown eyes, and it was not thanks to any kind of improvement of Ross's skills in hiding his own feelings. It was not the first time the two couples found themselves in the same gathering. With the spectacular improvement of their finances, Ross and Demelza attended more balls or other social occasions.

Each time Elizabeth had met Ross, his gaze had swept over her, showing nothing of the loving admiration she'd always seen in his eyes. There was only some guilt, and a kind of distant sadness, as if he had been looking at the portrait of someone once dearly loved, but gone for so long that all what was left was the distant memory of a once grievous sense of loss.

She, on the other hand, witnessed far too often the way Ross and Demelza looked at each other. With adoration, but immediate understanding as well, as if they were alone in the room, as crowded as it could be. Who had ever looked at her that way ? Not Ross, not even Francis, and certainly not George.

For she knew, now, that she was nothing more for George than a pawn to use in his own, one-sided war. Had he not said as much, on the night Demelza had come to warn them about the angry mob that was coming ?

"His foe is in possession of the field. Of his ancestral home, of the woman he loved" he'd said with smug satisfaction.

She was only some part of the bounty, along with Trenwith itself.

How could she have ever imagined that he had genuine feelings for her ? Was he even capable of love ? Elizabeth doubted it. He had only one chink in his armor of coldness, ruthlessness, and lack of any kind of human feelings, and it was his oversized and yet fragile ego.

She'd begun to understand that later on the very same night. Geoffrey Charles had been awakened and frightened by the shouting. But George hadn't allowed her to stay with him in his room, so she'd kept him with her near the hearth, wrapped in a blancket, untill he'd fallen asleep again. George had come to sit with them and for a moment, she'd had the illusion that some kind of domestic peace had been restored.

But then, George had pretended that they'd never been in real danger, he'd boasted that he'd made Ross back off, and she'd felt unable to utter the approving words that he expected after such a ridiculous statement. If anyone had backed off, it was George himself, and Elizabeth hadn't believed for a minute that Ross could have had anything to do with the riot. It was George who had brought that danger on them with his wooden fence and his outrageous orders to shoot at any trespasser.

But he'd felt humiliated by her silence and it had been all the more intolerable for him after having been humiliated by Ross just one hour before. Ross was out of reach, at least for the moment, but Elizabeth was not. And it was her poor, innocent little boy who had paid for all the bruises that George's ego had sustained that night. With that mild, sensible tone of his, the tone he used to disguise his worse acts of ruthlessness, he'd quietly announced that her little Geoffrey Charles was to go to Harrow, at only nine years old.

In the following days, she had pleaded, she had begged, but to no avail. And she realized now that it would have happened anyway, sooner or later. For George, Geoffrey Charles was a rival, not for her love, but for her total, undivided attention.

If only she'd made more efforts to understand Francis. He had loved her so much. Her first mariage of convenience had been far from hopeless. The second was.

Elizabeth realized that she had never paid much attention to what happened in Francis's head, had never asked herself what were the reasons of his decisions. She'd neither foreseen his growing jealousy (thought she suspected now that George had fostered it) nor understood why he'd suddenly started drinking and whoring. She'd not noticed the despair slowly overwhelming him untill it was nearly too late, she'd never figured out what had exactly made him ascend from his hopelessness to become the cheerful, quietly affectionate man he'd been in the last period of his too short life.

But George was a different matter. She had to understand what was going on behind that undecipharable mask and cold eyes, what triggered his sudden, vindictive reactions. She had to study him as if he was some kind of poisonous snake. For he was just that, and only a better knowledge of how to manage him could make life tolerable for her and for her son.

All in all, she'd begun to fully realize that the one focus point around which revolved his thoughts and his actions was called Ross Poldark. He'd befriended Francis, then nearly ruined him, pretended to be a caring godfather for Geoffrey Charles, married her, decided to live at Trenwith, for only one purpose, to get at Ross, one way or another.

That Ross fascinated George was not very difficult to understand. He tended to have that effect on people. Even those who blamed his disregard for the rules of polite society and sometimes for the law couldn't help but hold some kind of begrudging respect for him. There were of course some exceptions, such as Elizabeth's own mother, out of concern for her daughter's social standing. No wonder she had got along so well with George.

But for George, Ross was nothing less than an obsession. Why ?

If she managed to understand that, she'd had the key to regaining some kind of control over her own destiny.

She remembered a conversation she'd heard between George and his uncle Cary, one of the rare times the unpleasant old man had come to visit them at Trenwith. Obviously, Cary Warleggan blamed every single one of George's last moves, whether it was his marriage or his decision to live at Trenwith, and he had no qualms in showing it by his scarce visits and his rude attitude toward her. This time, she'd avoided him, remaining on the gallery to listen what was said in the parlor below, as she often did,.

"You told me once that you admired the man because he said what he tought and did what he liked", Cary had said. "But you're the one who can do what he wants. You have the financial means, the influence among the members of parliament and courts. And yet, you chose to marry that impecunious widow in her late twenties, and to bury yourself in that little manor, just to get at one man. A socially ruined, penniless man."

"He's not penniless anymore, as you well know. And he's not socially ruined either. He's still received in the best house of the county, along with his scullery maid, in spite of all his antics, that would have made an outcast of any other man. As if none of the usual rules ever applied to him."

"Whatever, he's only some coutry squire, with not a tenth of your wealth and influence. I agree that he does have a following, as you say, and that we must do our best to destroy his detrimental influence, but why did he have to impact your private life in such a way ? That's absurd, insane."

Insane ? Elizabeth pondered over the word. Indeed, wasn't her husband somehow unbalanced, for all his cool and collected behavior ?

Apparently, what George mostly admired in Ross, along with his ability to command friendship and loyalty, was his freedom of speech and actions. Of course, such liberty was out off the reach of a social climber like him. But all in all, why would George, whose every move was commanded by his appetite for power, for control, envy such a thing ? One couldn't control others without controling their own acts and words, in order to make them some means to an end.

But precisely, wasn't George's resentment partly due to the fact that such rule didn't seem to apply to Ross ? All what George could see was the fact that Ross said what he thoughts, did what he liked, and had nonetheless a huge influence and impact on the people around him. But it was an influence that was not achieved by threat and manipulation, like George's. It stemmed from love and respect.

Maybe this was what was intolarable for George. Instead of having to calculate his every move, he wanted what Ross had : devoted friends, neighbors who truly respected him. But that was completely out of his reach. And it was not just because of his social origins, but mostly because of the means he'd used to climb to the top. And ultimately, because of the kind of man he was. George wanted something he was not only unable to reach, but even to understand. That's why he called a 'following' Ross's ability to command affection from his friends, respect from his neighbors and even sympathy from simple passerbies. That's why he kept pretending that Ross's behavior was due to the fact that he was 'born into money', that his disregard for the common rules was aristocratic arrogance and the esteem in which he was held, an unfair privilege granted by his old name.

But there was even more than that. From what Francis had said to her once, George had begun to make offers of friendship to Ross as soon as he'd come back from the war. Yet in the same time, he hadn't been able to prevent himself from making offensive comments in front of him, in particular about his habits of 'befriending the rabble'. George's jealousy, from the very beginning, had been at war with his desire to acquire vicarioulsy, through Ross's friendship, what he could never get by himself. And it had led to a strange one-sided, love-hate relationship. Very soon, he'd tried to make Ross fall into the traps he had set. But once he had succeeded, there he came, offering to his victim a way out from the trap as some token of frienship, like when he'd visited Ross in prison, the night before his trial. But Elizabeth was fully convinced, now, that Ross's prosecution had been George's doing. So he'd tried to buy a man's friendship by removing the noose he himself had put around that man's neck ! But then again, what could George understand about friendship ? What he truly wanted was to own Ross, as if by owning him he'd own the qualities he envied but would never possess.

Oh yes, the man was definitively unhinged.

And she was married to him. So, appart from pretending to applaud his plans and share his views, what else was left for her to do but to never let him forget that she was his most precious, most valuable conquest over his enemy ? She'd even have to maintain, as long as possible, the illusion that Ross had still an interest in her.

And above all, she had to never, ever let him guess that it was not her who had chosen him over Ross, but Ross who had chosen Demelza over her.

 _ **I didn't read the books yet, so I don't know what happens between Elizabeth and George after the villagers' attack on Trenwith. Maybe George makes a tolerable husband for Elizabeth in the end, considering that she expects quite little on a sentimental level. But if anything could shake Elizabeth's willful blindness, if would be George's decision to send Geoffrey Charles away. And what would any woman make of that sentence "his foe is in possession of the field" ? Elizabeth is not the brightest of women, but it should nonetheless open her eyes at last.**_

 _ **Elizabeth's possible epiphany gave me also an opportunity to analyze again George's very strange and complex obsession with Ross. He's really a fascinating villain, with so many layers of feelings, but he's also very self-delusional, so I think it's not possible to write a story where he would do some self-introspection.**_


End file.
